At the table of the perfect boarding house the captain was not inclined to be communicative regarding his reasons and his intentions. He was a prime favorite there, praising Keturah's cooking, joking with Angeline concerning what he was pleased to call her "giddy" manner of dressing and wearing "side curls," and telling yarns of South American dress and behavior, which would probably have shocked Mrs. Tripp--she having recently left the Methodist church to join the "Come-Outers," because the Sunday services of the former were, with the organ and a paid choir, altogether "too play-actin'"--if they had not been so interesting, and if Captain Cy had not always concluded them with the observation: "But there! you can't expect nothin' more from ignorant critters denied the privileges of congregational singin' and experience meetin's; hey, Matilda?"Mrs. Tripp would sigh and admit that she supposed not.
"Only I do wish Mr. Daniels, OUR minister, might have a chance to preach over 'em, poor things!""So do I," with a covert wink at Mrs. Bangs, who was a stanch adherent of the regular faith. "South America 'd be just the place for him; ain't that so, Keturah?"He evaded all personal questions put to him by the boarders, explaining that he was renovating the old place just for fun--he always had had a gang of men working for him, and it seemed natural somehow. But to the friends of his boyhood, Asaph Tidditt and Bailey Bangs, he told the real truth.
"I swan to man!" exclaimed Bailey, almost tearfully, as the trio wandered through the rooms of the Cy Whittaker place, dodging paper hangers and plasterers; "I swan to man, Whit, if it don't almost seem as though I was a boy again. Why! it's your dad's house come back alive, it is so! Look at this settin' room! Seem's if Icould see him now a-settin' by that ere stove, and Mrs. Whittaker, your ma, over there a-sewin', and old Cap'n Cy--your granddad--snoozin' in that big armchair-- Why! why, whit! it's the very image of the chair he always set in!"Captain Cy laughed aloud.
"It's more n' that, Bailey," he said; "it's THE chair. 'Twas up attic, all busted and crippled, but I had it made over like new.
And there's granddad's picture, lookin' just as I remember him--only he wan't quite so much of a frozen wax image as he's painted there. I'm goin' to hang it where it always hung, over the mantelpiece, next to the lookin' glass.
"Great land of love, boys!" he went on, "you fellers don't know what this means to me. Many and many's the time I've had this old house and this old room in my mind. I've seen 'em aboard ship in a howlin' gale off the Horn. I've seen 'em down in Surinam of a hot night, when there wan't a breath scurcely and the Caribs went around dressed in a handkerchief and a paper cigar, and it made you wish you could. I've seen 'em--but there! every time I've seen 'em I've swore that some day I'd come back and LIVE 'em, and now, by the big dipper! here I am. Oh, I tell you, chummies, you want to be fired OUT of a home and out of a town to appreciate 'em! Not that I blame the old man; he and I was too much alike to cruise in company. But Bayport I was born in, and in the Bayport graveyard they can plant me when I'm ready for the scrap heap. It's in the blood and-- Why, see here! Don't I TALK like a Bayporter?""You sartin do!" replied Asaph emphatically.
"A body 'd think you'd been diggin' clams and pickin' cranberries in Bassett's Holler all your life long, to hear you.""You bet! Well, that's pride; that's what that is. I prided myself on hangin' to the Bayport twang through thick and thin.
Among all the Spanish 'Carambas' and 'Madre de Dioses' it did me good to come out with a good old Yankee 'darn' once in a while.
Kept me feelin' like a white man. Oh, I'm a Whittaker! _I_ know it. And I've got all the Whittaker pig-headedness, I guess. And because the old man--bless his heart, I say now--told me Ishouldn't BE a Whittaker no more, nor live like a Whittaker, Isimply swore up and down I would be one and come back here, when I'd made my pile, to heave anchor and stay one till I die. Maybe that's foolishness, but it's me."He puffed vigorously at the pipe which had taken the place of the Snowflake cigar, and added:
"Take this old settin' room--why, here it is; see! Here's dad in his chair and ma in hers, and, if you go back far enough, granddad in his, just as you say, Bailey. And here's me, a little shaver, squattin' on the floor by the stove, lookin' at the pictures in a heap of Godey's Lady's Book. And says dad, 'Bos'n,' he says--he used to call me 'Bos'n' in those days--'Bos'n,' says dad, 'run down cellar and fetch me up a pitcher of cider, that's a good feller.'
Yes, yes; that's this room as I've seen it in my mind ever since Itiptoed through it the night I run away, with my duds in a bundle under my arm. Do you wonder I was fightin' mad when I saw what that Howes tribe had done to it?"Superintending the ****** over of the old home occupied most of Captain Cy's daylight time that summer. His evenings were spent at Simmons's store. We have no clubs in Bayport, strictly speaking, for the sewing circle and the Shakespeare Reading Society are exclusively feminine in membership; therefore Simmons's store is the gathering place of those males who are bachelors or widowers or who are sufficiently free from petticoat government to risk an occasional evening out. Asaph Tidditt was a regular sojourner at the store. Bailey Bangs, happening in to purchase fifty cents' worth of sugar or to have the molasses jug filled, lingered occasionally, but not often. Captain Cy explained Bailey's absence in characteristic fashion.
